Who I am

After several years of long nights studying and going through thousands of lines of computer code I was able to finish college as a computer engineer. I had big dreams of working for a respectable company and provide a future family with a respectable living.

Life sometimes doesn't go exactly as planned. It never crossed my mind I was going to fall in love and have my first child the second I finished college and one year later my wife, my son and I were starting a new life as immigrants, in a foreign country, the United States. My wife's family had brought us to New York where we could provide our son with a better life.

Starting a new life in a new country is full of ups and downs. For the first year I wasn't able to secure a job in Computer Sciences or anything related to the tech industry so I went on to do labor jobs while my wife took care of our son.

I remember thinking to myself I had to do something about my career and I wasn't ready to wait for my dream job to become available so I said, If I don't get the job I want I will create it myself, and that's how I started working on my business. Two years later I was a full time self employed Computer Consultant and Web Designer.

Here are some of the steps I took to be able to open my first business

Business Research: Researched a lot about the services that other companies were offering that I could do. I spent hours studying other local computer companies and even visiting them as a client to understand how they worked.

Work for free: I did a lot of work for free for friends and family. This helped me reassure myself that I was ready to start doing computer consulting and web design for other people.

Create a website: I created my own business website and I made it as professional as the best website I could find in my industry. I also listed a page with my prices which were very competitive compare to other businesses.

Advertise my services: I didn't have the slightest idea on how to find clients outside from our family and friends, so I published classified ads on different online websites. I still remember the first called I received asking if we offered web design services, it was almost amazing to think someone was calling my yet to be web design business to hire me.

Work extra hours: Anytime I finished muy regular job I would go on to work for a client. I was as responsable with my duties towards my business customers as I was with my daily labor job. My job paid our bills but my future business was going to give us a better life.

Read a lot: Yes, every entrepreneur should read a lot, I still will get home and spend at least a half an hour reading before I go to bed. Read about business, economics, marketing, management. I read anything that I believed was important for me to learn for my own self improvement or for applying it at my business.

7 years down the road

It has been 7 years since I started that first business Alex Uria Web Design and now I'm father to my precious son and also to a 9 months old gorgeous princess.

Now I have employees, although I like to think of them as my team, we work with attorneys from different states and help them advertise through Lista Legal our online directory for lawyers who want to grow their hispanic customers. My son comes to my office often and we go out to get a juice or have lunch, he said I can do anything I want, I'm my own boss. I still do most of what I listed from when I was starting my business, I still work long hours, but now I do it with the satisfaction to do what I like to do in life and my family has a better life.